


If I Die Before I Wake

by Eldritch



Category: Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen | Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-29
Updated: 2011-09-29
Packaged: 2017-10-24 04:04:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eldritch/pseuds/Eldritch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haibara You, September 17, 1972. Rougetsu Island.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Die Before I Wake

There's a bottle of vodka at the back of his dresser, hidden from his father's disapproving gaze and lectures on proper respect for ancestral traditions. He'd brought it back with him two years ago, thinking of the celebration they could have when Sakuya was finally cured. Since the ritual's failure, he's broken it out more often than he'd like to admit -- it was an escape, one of the only ones he had on this unchanging prison of an island. Now, he drops his hand from the drawer without opening it. There's no need for alcohol, not now -- not when the irony of his current situation is enough of a burn at the back of his throat.

Years of wondering if maybe it wouldn't be better to just lose himself in the madness of Getsuyuu Syndrome -- if it'd be better to just forget everything and join his patients in their dazed moon-worship -- and when the opportunity finally presents itself, he's terrified out of his mind at the prospect.

He knows with a cool certainty that he's going to die tonight. The only question is how. The beautiful, empty shell that was once his sister would gladly grant him her apocalyptic baptism, but You has decided that he would prefer to remain himself until the end… whoever that might be. These past two years locked up on the island have done their best to rob him of any vestiges of personal identity he'd ever had.

You has always found it easiest to exist through other people's perceptions. His father had viewed him as an extension of himself, a vessel to fill with the knowledge necessary to carry on the Haibara family work when Shigeto's body eventually, inevitably failed him. And so You went to medical school and inherited a desperate obsession along with his coursework. Ayako had wanted a friend rather than a parent unnervingly close to her in age, so You never bothered trying to chastise her for their shared peculiarities and indulged her instead. Sakuya--

He could never quite figure out what Sakuya had wanted from him. She hid so well behind her sad smile and warm embrace. Had she wanted him to be a brother, a son, a lover? Every time he thought he'd finally figured it out, something would happen to shake his certainty, to make him wonder if all she was doing was reflecting his desires back at him with the skewed brilliance of a shattered mirror.

There's a distant scream somewhere on one of the lower floors that jars him from his thoughts. It's too late now for this kind of introspection, he tells himself, disgusted with the direction his thoughts have taken.

Maybe he'll go up to the roof. It's a fitting place for an end. His mother had certainly thought so, and who is he to question her judgement? But first, there's one last thing he has to do.

* * *

"Ayako," he says, reaching through the spider's web of string she's cocooned around herself and her bed. She doesn't react, even when he gives her shoulder a rough shake. Though her head wobbles slightly from the force, her eyes remain fixed on some invisible, imaginary point beyond the bed's canopy. Over the past two weeks, Ayako's condition has degenerated rapidly. Even if by some miracle she survives the night, it won't be long before the disease takes her mind completely.

But even knowing that, he can't just walk away from her. She is as beautiful and broken as her mother. And this is the sort of thing a father should do for his daughter, he muses, distantly.

"Ayako." He pitches his voice low and soothing. "How would you like to play a new game?"

That seems to get her attention. She turns her head, though her wide eyes still stare past him, unfocused. "You-chan…?" she asks distantly. "What kind of game?"

He smiles, knowing she won't notice if the expression is tight around the edges. "A hiding game. I want you to stay here, no matter what kind of interesting noises you hear outside the room." Inwardly, he doubts that even the loudest screams could rouse her at this point, but he tries not to dwell on that. "Don't open the door for anyone."

"Okay." For one breathless moment, she is herself again, cunning and demanding. Her eyes narrow suspiciously. "But you'd better bring me a new toy when the game is over. It doesn't sound fun at all."

"Mm. I promise." The lie comes easily. It's not as though he'll be around for her to berate when he breaks his word. You brushes a tangle of hair from her face, letting his hand linger on her cheek, and the memory of her birth comes unbidden to his mind. He'd touched her like that then, in that hospital room with the bright fluorescent lights and the disapproving whispers of the nurses in the background, awed that he could have had part in producing a creature so delicate and terrible.

By the time he withdraws his hand, she is distracted again, humming something tuneless and distractingly familiar.

* * *

So, You thinks. His footsteps echo loudly as he leisurely wanders the now-deserted hallways. Here he is at last, bound by no one's desires but his own. It should feel freeing. Instead, he just feels strangely hollow. It's disconcerting to realize that maybe, with nothing left to work for, he's managed to lose his identity just as surely as his patients.

A door slams open somewhere behind him, sending a stray gurney over with a clatter. You is prepared to ignore it, like he's ignored any other still un-Bloomed stragglers in their futile scrabbles for safety.

"Haibara!"

But there's no way he can ignore that voice. It's with no small measure of incredulity that he turns his head -- surely after everything that's happened today, that stupid detective can't still be following him? Any sane man would have given up and died by now, or at least secluded himself in a room somewhere in a vain hope for survival. And yet there he is, Kirishima Choushirou, glaring at You with the same determination he'd worn two years ago.

And You realizes that there's still one role left for him to play. He throws his head back in a laugh, unable to hold back the sheer giddiness that's suddenly unfurling in his chest, and breaks into a run.


End file.
